“Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch and a kick just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch and a kick no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick.” –Bruce Lee

I spoke with Jim Wendler of EliteFTS.com about programs a couple of years ago. Jim is of the position that all programs suck because most Elite lifters don’t have more than an inkling of what they are going to do when they go into the gym. They know it’s a lower body day, but they aren’t sure if they are going to work up to a 5RM, a 3RM, or a heavy single. If they feel good, they’ll take a short rest period between sets. If they feel tired, they’ll rest longer. They may not even be sure what exercise they are going to do. They definitely don’t know how many sets they are going to do or what other exercises they may or may not do.

All Elite lifters perform different programs. Although there are similarities, they are different enough that it seems that an actual exercise prescription is an irrelevant part of their success. I can see Jim’s point. Programs are probably not needed for these guys.

However, I started thinking–that’s what most beginners do, too.
They just go in with no plan at all. That’s what I did. That’s what all of you probably did, and after a point, made no progress at all. I made better progress once I had some kind of a plan. So why doesn’t “freestyle” training work for a beginner but works really well for advanced guys?

Think of it this way. An Elite kick boxer may not know what he’s going to do exactly when he arrives in the gym. But if you’ve NEVER kick boxed before, do you really think that you’ll instinctively know how many rounds of jumping rope, shadow boxing, pad work, shield work, bag work, and sparring you should do? Or what techniques you should work on? Of course not.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a full circle. Beginners did whatever they wanted. Then they progressed to more structured programs. At some point, they evolved to less structure and went back to a more “freestyle” plan once again.

Level one: Training freestyle

This is where we all started. My first exposure to the weight room was in high school. My first program? I just went around the machines and the free weight exercises in the order that they were laid out. It looked something like shoulder press, bench press, leg press, hanging knee raise, low cable, high cable (I did curls on the low cable and triceps press downs on the high cable and the next time around I did rows and lat pull-downs by changing the handle), and leg extension/leg curl (I did leg extensions the first time and then laid flat down and did leg curls the next time). Essentially, it was a universal multi-station with some other machines or dumbbells off to the side.

No plan. No progression. No record keeping. I just picked whatever weight felt good and did some reps. I usually went three times around and then my friends and I would have a sit-up competition.

Level two: Chop-shop programming

When I decided to start training seriously, my friend Terry and I used to go to the local gym in a town called Broxburn. The program that the gym instructors gave us was actually pretty solid. But of course we changed it!

Anyway, we went on Sunday evenings and trained upper body. (We didn’t do legs because I was doing Taekwon-do, Terry was playing basketball, and we were both running. That’s all the leg training you need, right?)

The first exercise we did was the flat bench press. The second exercise was dips and then we moved on to back exercises. Only the couple of bodybuilders and the one or two powerlifters that were there at that time decided to take us under their wing and teach us some things. They’d see us bench pressing and tell us that we should add incline bench pressing to our routine. Or they’d mention that we should use dumbbells and that we should finish with a superset of dumbbell flyes and push-ups. Terry and I listened. And we took their advice. All of it!

Pretty soon, our upper body workout started with flat barbell bench, incline barbell bench, and decline barbell bench followed by all three positions repeated for dumbbell pressing. Then we finished with incline and flat flyes and push-ups. Then we moved on to dips. We did ten exercises for chest for three sets of ten (of course) each! We’re lucky these guys left before we started the back exercises or who knows how long our workout would have taken…

To be fair, the original program that we were given was actually useful. And the intentions of the other guys in the gym were great. They were just trying to help us. We made progress. All of -our lifts were increasing regularly despite training only upper body. The problem was our inability to filter the information and use it effectively. We were reading Muscle and Fitness and adding in stuff all the time. I’d bring in exercises that we did in Taekwon do class and Terry would show me exercises he’d done in basketball training.

It was a step above freestyling but at least we had some mentors. The exercises were shown to us by coaches. We were just mixing and matching it. I remember we read about “breakdowns” where you did your max set of six, cut 5 lbs, and repped out and repeated this for a triple drop set. Oh yes, we did that one for a while.

But we were making progress at least. In fact, if we’d have been on our own in the gym, Terry and I might have made better progress. With less information, we wouldn’t have been overloaded.

Level three: Exact recipe programming

I think this is the next progression for most of us. We are tired of making sporadic progress and want to know exactly what to do. The key phrase is “exactly.”

To be fair, these programs work well because progression is built in and they’re generally sound. The problem comes when you’re so busy measuring your stance and counting your tempo and reps that you forget to actually train and push yourself hard.

Level four: Template programming

For me, this was a big breakthrough. I guess the Westside Barbell crew and Louie Simmons were the first people I saw implementing this strategy. The guidelines were “max effort upper body” and you slotted in various exercises and assistance exercises within that template without an exact prescription.

I think this is where most of us really start to understand training. If your goal is to lose fat, what does a fat loss program look like? What does a strength program look like? You start to realize that maybe the loading parameters and the template are what determine the results, but you have flexibility within that template. If you do your warm up sets and you feel on fire, you get after it a bit. If you’re flat, you back off.

I think most top bodybuilders, powerlifters, and Olympic lifters are at this level. In terms of sports practice, most athletes are certainly at this level as well. They have a “plan” perhaps, a rough idea of what they are going to do. And they understand some type of long-term periodization. But they are experienced enough to be flexible, yet disciplined enough to do the exercises they know will benefit them the most even though they may not be their favorite ones. They instinctively know when to push and when to back off. At this point, training really becomes an ongoing process rather than a prescription. It’s almost more of an art than a science.

Summary

I think this is like the road to mastery in any field. It’s a natural evolution of learning. And it’s almost full circle.

The founder of Judo, Dr. Jigoro Kano, had beginners start by wearing a white belt, which signified innocence. He gave out colored belts before the black belt with the idea that the belt “darkens with knowledge.” However, the highest rank of Judo master (above tenth degree black belt) wears a white belt. Kano believed that if someone achieved a stage higher than tenth dan, “one transcends such things as colors and grades and therefore returns to a white belt, thereby completing the full circle of Judo as of life.”

There’s an interesting fact about investing a penny, and doubling that investment every day.
So – day one – you have one cent in the bank. Day two – two cents. Day three – four cents. Day four – eight cents etc.

By day 30 – you’ll have over $5 million saved (go ahead – do the math).

The idea is that major change starts with a small investment.

Now obviously it would be pretty difficult to find a bank that would double your money for you every day — but the point is that seemingly insignificant investments (at the time) can add up to something very significant over time.

Let’s put this another way. What if you improved your diet, and your exercise program by 1% per day…

Actually – let’s go even lower – 0.3% per day. 3 tenths of a percent.

Day two – another 3/10. Day three another — and so on.

At the end of one year – you’d have improved your diet and exercise program by over 100%

All success is – is just a few simple disciplines repeated over time.

Brian Tracy has said that reading one hour per day will make you an expert on the topic of your choice.

One hour is not a big investment. But when you add that up over the course of the year – that’s 365 hours. Or nine 40-hour work weeks.

Whether your goal is fat loss, muscle building or building your personal training business — Small investments compounded over time will add up to big results.

This is one of my favorite essays. (Yeah I have favorite poems and essays….)

There was a time in my life when I was just so focused on “what’s next” “when I get the chance to …” “when this happens I’ll….” that I forgot to just enjoy the journey.
After cancer, I now make a point to always enjoy the journey.

I’ve been getting a lot of emails from coaching clients and friends that all sound the same — “When this happens I’ll be able to …. when that happens I’ll….”

I can remember being like that. Always looking forward. When..When..When…

Rachel gave me this poem shortly after we had started dating. 19 years later it still hangs on my office wall:

The Station
By Robert Hastings

Tucked away in our subconscious minds is a vision- an idyllic vision in which we see ourselves on a long journey that spans an entire continent. We’re traveling by train and, from the windows. we drink in the passing scenes of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at crossings, of row upon row of cotton and corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of city skyline and village halls.

But uppermost in our conscious minds is our final destination-for at a certain hour and on a given day, our train will pull into the station with bells ringing, flags waving, and bands playing. And once that day comes, our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. So, restlessly, we pace the aisles, and count the miles, peering ahead, cursing the minutes for loitering, waiting, waiting, for the station,,

“Yes, when we reach the station that will be it,” we cry. “When we’re eighteen! When we buy that new 450 SL Mercedes! When we put the last kid through college! When we win that promotion! When we pay off the mortgage! When we retire! Yes, from that day on, like the hero and heroines of a child’s fairy tale, we will live happily ever after.

Sooner or later, however, we must realize there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The journey is the joy.

The station is an illusion- it constantly outdistances us. Yesterday’s a memory; tomorrow’s a dream. Yesterday belongs to history; tomorrow belongs to God. Yesterday’s a fading sunset; tomorrow a faint sunrise. So, shut the door on yesterday and throw the key away, for only today is there light enough to live and love. It isn’t the burdens of today that drive men mad. Rather, it’s regret over yesterday and fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are the twin thieves who rob us of that Golden Treasure we call today, this tiny strip of light between the two nights.

“Relish the moment” is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24, “This is a day the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, swim more rivers, climb more mountains, kiss more babies, count more stars. Laugh more and cry less. Go barefoot more oftener. Eat more ice cream. Ride more merry go rounds. Watch more sunsets. Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.

Here’s a little ‘quiz’ that my TKD instructor taught me years ago. It’s about fighting and apparently no top fighter ever gave a different answer. It ties in with the mindset of success.

“Picture two fighters engaged in combat. After a long tough battle, the one who has been slightly dominant catches the other in a choke hold and begins to tighten his hold.

What would you do in that situation?”

Every champion fighter answered the same…

-“I’d keep squeezing until the other guy tapped out or went out!”

You see, a champion fighter just cannot picture that he (or she) is not winning the fight. It’s inconceivable to them that they wouldn’t succeed. They feel that success is an inevitable conclusion. They don’t lose. Ever. Not even for a second.

Most people instantly picture themselves as the one being choked. They immediately associate themselves with losing.

The champions couldn’t even fathom that not winning was even an option.

This is the mindset that you need when you start training, start a new diet, want to burn fat and lose weight, start a business venture, or begin anything. Expect success to the point that anything but, is impossible for you to even imagine.

All those cliches are true: ‘Where the mind goes everything follows’. ‘If you think you can or you think you can’t – you’re right’.

“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them”
Bruce Lee

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Yesterday I talked about Progress. Today I want to address progress in terms of body composition improvements.

I got the above graph from Alan Aragon. It represents exactly what happens in the long term when trying to change body composition either yourself or with clients. Plateaus are necessary for our survival — they occur because of two causes – psychological adaptation, and physiological adaptation.

You can see by the graph that each plateau includes a period of no progress, followed by a slight “sliding back” before you progress again. Additionally – each subsequent plateau occurs at a faster rate than the previous one, and is usually a smaller progression each time. This phase length varies from novice to experienced trainees. Novices can likely progress on the same program for far longer than an experienced trainee – although changing the routine can be useful psychologically.

The key to “breaking” plateaus is to manipulate your nutrition and exercise programs SLIGHTLY. A subtle change (e.g. switching from the bike to the treadmill in your cardio workouts) is often enough to ‘kick start’ progress. The progression of a single variable like load used in an exercise can keep forcing adaptations even when other variables remain the same.

A good coach is always trying to stay one step ahead of any plateaus – by manipulating the training variables to ensure continued progress. For example, in our fat loss programs one of the tools we use is to adjust the rep range every single workout (using undulating periodization) and change the exercises completely every 4 weeks. You could also change the load every workout, the nutrition program every four weeks, and also change the resistance training and energy system portions at the same rate. Basically a sixteen week program is a sequence of four, four-week programs, and can easily be adjusted to become a 24 week program for the beginner.

The bottom line is to remember that plateaus are not necessarily a bad thing. In actual fact, our ultimate goal IS a plateau – to reach a favorable body composition range and stay there.

“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” – Herbert Simon

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We now live in the information age… you can buy a book on any subject you want and have it delivered by tomorrow. There are hundreds of thousands of websites on almost any topic you can think about. It’s amazing.

I get asked a lot – why so much conflicting advice on fitness/fat loss etc?

And honestly — when you get right down to it — I don’t think there really is that much conflicting advice – most good people agree on 90% of their topic. I think it’s that people lack the ability to FILTER good information from bad.

So in the information age — how do you filter information? I mean, at this point there is so much information available – that you NEED to filter out as much as you take on board.

It’s that simple. I’m sure that I miss out on “some” information by ignoring other sources — but I think it’s an acceptable trade off.

99 times out of 100 who will have the better information on strength training ?– a 19 year old who has only ever trained himself — or a professional coach with 19 years of full time experience?

Who knows more about marketing – a personal trainer or a direct response marketing expert with 30 years of experience in the field and a seven figure income from his results?

If you had cancer – would you prefer to consult with one of the top oncologists in the country – who makes a living fighting cancer and saving lives? Or would you listen to an internet based conspiracy theorist?

In today’s world, filtering information might be a more important skill than finding information.